Comrade Chou En-lai’s Speech

[This article is reprinted from Peking Review, Vol. 9, #35, Aug. 26,
1966, pp. 9-10. Thanks are due to the WWW.WENGEWANG.ORG
web site for some of the work done for this posting.]

Comrades, Students:

How are you all?

Greetings and proletarian revolutionary salutations
to you!

We express our warm welcome to the revolutionary
students, teachers, staff members and workers who have come from different parts of
the nation! You’ve travelled a long way and worked hard!

The Central Committee of the Party has just held
its Eleventh Plenary Session. This session was presided over by Chairman Mao himself.
It was a meeting of great historic significance. Its success is a new victory for Mao
Tse-tung’s thought. In the last few days all Peking has been astir with joy as have
been the towns and rural areas throughout the country. To the accompaniment of gongs
and drums, people everywhere are sending their messages of greetings, holding
celebration meetings and giving their pledges. Hundreds of millions of people have
plunged into the mighty current of the great proletarian cultural revolution. Today,
together with our great leader Chairman Mao, we are holding a celebration rally here
too in Tien An Men Square to greet the new upsurge in the great proletarian cultural
revolution!

The 16-point decision [concerning the great
proletarian cultural revolution] adopted by this session was formulated under the
personal leadership of Chairman Mao and is the programme of the great proletarian
cultural revolution. All revolutionary comrades should conscientiously study it,
become familiar with it, grasp it and apply it. It is the weapon with which we fight
in the great proletarian cultural revolution and it is our compass for action. We
must study and apply this great programme well and carry it through in our practical
action.

Chairman Mao has taught us that we must rely on
ourselves to make revolution. We will educate ourselves, liberate ourselves and rise
up ourselves to make revolution. All revolutionaries should serve the people
wholeheartedly and be the servants of the people. They should be pupils of the masses
before becoming their teachers. They should set themselves firmly against monopolizing
things which should be done by the masses themselves, against acting as high and
mighty bureaucrats, standing above the masses and blindly ordering them about.

We hope that the revolutionary students of Peking
and those from other parts of the country will learn from each other, support one
another, exchange their revolutionary experience and strengthen their revolutionary
unity. You students of the capital are the hosts; you should receive the guests well,
develop the spirit of proletarian class friendship, enthusiastically help them solve
difficulties and when questions crop up properly consult with them.

The main task of the revolutionary teachers and
students both in Peking and in other parts of the country is to carry out the great
cultural revolution well in their own schools: do a good job, first, in struggling
[against and crushing those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road],
second, in criticizing and repudiating [the reactionary bourgeois academic
“authorities” and the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes],
and third, in transforming [education, literature and art and all other parts of the
superstructure that do not correspond to the socialist economic base]. This is both
a very glorious and arduous task. You must dare to shoulder this task by yourselves
and we believe you can certainly do it!

In the great proletarian cultural revolution, we
must eradicate bourgeois ideology and foster proletarian ideology with the utmost
vigour, that is, vigorously establish the complete ascendancy of Mao Tse-tung’s
thought. Sailing the seas depends on the man at the helm and our great helmsman is
Chairman Mao. We must respond to the call of Comrade Lin Piao to unfold to an even
greater extent the mass movement to creatively study and apply Chairman Mao’s works
throughout the Party, the army and the country.

We must hold aloft the great red banner of Mao
Tse-tung’s thought, carry through to the end the great proletarian cultural
revolution, build socialist China into an impregnable proletarian state and fulfil
the glorious historic mission entrusted to us by the Chinese people and the
revolutionary people of the world.

Long live the great proletarian cultural
revolution!

Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat!

Long live the Communist Party of China!

Long live the invincible thought of Mao Tse-tung!

Long live our great leader Chairman Mao! Long live,
long live Chairman Mao!